I fear we are losing the capacity for proportionate response to misbehaviour, to temper justice with mercy, to forgive the penitent and to remember that we are all sinners living to some degree in moral glass houses. We are slipping into the practice of consigning moral, ethical and even legal questions to a sort of Manichaean lottery, where those who are not legally convicted of egregious offences, but are tripped up, caught out in naughty or tawdry behaviour – however sincerely the misconduct is regretted for moral as well as tactical reasons – don’t make the cut, are ruthlessly reclassified as bad and cast out like Old Testament lepers.